Evaluation of Lake Superior Water Quality Health [Project]

Lake Superior, the world's largest freshwater lake by surface area, is amongst Minnesota's greatest natural resources providing drinking water, shipping, recreation, and tourism. Recently the lake has been undergoing significant changes including increasing water temperatures, decreasing ice cover, increasing nutrient loads, decreasing biological productivity, increasing invasive species, and changes in species abundance and distribution. The reasons behind these changes and the interactions amongst them are not well understood. Scientists at the Large Lakes Observatory at the University of Minnesota - Duluth are using this appropriation to gather critical baseline data on Lake Superior to evaluate the impacts these changes are having on the lake and how natural resource managers and scientific and regulatory entities can best respond to the changes. No prior large lake study has ever included the breadth of measurements, geographic range, and span of seasons to be examined by this study.